Toward the End of Time (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Updike's Toward the End of Time received mixed reviews. Some critics really liked it; others did not. For instance, a critic for Publishers Weekly commends "this magnificent new novel" for "its futuristic setting." The same critic concludes that the "book has all the hallmarks of a classic."

From another point of view, Jeff Giles, writing for Newsweek, states that Updike's Toward the End of Time "is one of the author's rare misfires, a dull, disjointed roadside accident of a novel." In a similar tone, Marvin J. LaHood, writing for World Literature Today, states that Toward the End of Time is one of Updike's "worst." LaHood continued: "There is nothing noble about Turnbull [the protagonist]. His mind is filled with tawdry images and erotic desires; his attitude toward women is demeaning and contemptible." LaHood concludes that Updike "seems one of the most uneven of American writers." Updike can write great books, LaHood concedes, but Toward the End of Time is definitely not one of them.

Writing for the New Statesman, Jan Dalley points out that "to complain about Updike's attitude to women is like complaining that a cat has claws." Since the sexism is inescapable, Dalley cautions readers: "If you don't think that the vibrant beauty of his prose and the taut rhythm of his ideas are worth the price, then you just have to read another writer." At the end of her review, Dalley states that Updike's "quirks are infuriating as always, but his imaginative brilliance and ferocious commitment to his truth are undimmed." Then Dalley adds: "His gaze is as unflinching as ever; as ever, its contempt for others is richly matched by its self-disgust. That is Updike. If you don't like the cat's claws, get a dog."

Will Manley, writing for Booklist begins his review of Toward the End of Time with strong praise for Updike's style:

His work is uplifted by a prose style of beauty and precision and a narrative skill of perceptiveness and sensitivity. Updike is a captivating storyteller with an insightful eye and a wonderful mastery of the English language. His characters are memorable, his dialogue is real, and his plots speak to us with directness and meaning.

This is Manley's view before reading Toward the End of Time. After reading this "wretched" book, however, Manley concludes: "Updike is indeed human, maybe not like you and me, but human all the same." Flawed as all humans are, the great author is fully able to write a terrible book.

The author Margaret Atwood, writing a review for the New York Times paradoxically states that Toward the End of Time "is deplorably good." At-wood continues: "Surely no American writer has written so much, for so long, so consistently well." Atwood praises the book and its "brilliant metaphors." She asserts that "As a writer, Updike can do anything he wants." Atwood concludes that this novel could "scarcely be bettered."

Coming down between the admirers and detractors, Edward B. St. John, a critic for the Library Journal, describes the novel as "uneven" but nonetheless evincing "the bittersweet, elegiac quality of Rabbit at Rest."